Stock exchange with the third-highest volume of trading in the United States, located in New York. The bulk of trading on AMEX is in index options (computer technology index, institutional index, major-market index), but shares of small- to medium-sized companies are also traded there. The exchange was founded as an alternative to the NYSE. In 1998 the AMEX merged with the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD). Under the merger the NASD assumes the role of parent company, with AMEX operating as an independent entity within the larger NASD family of companies.

AMEX

See American Stock Exchange

Annual Meeting

Meeting of a company's stockholders held once a year at which its managers report on the year's results. It is at the annual meeting that shareholders can ask questions of management.

Annual Report

Yearly record of a publicly held company's financial condition. It includes a description of the firm's operations, management's discussion of the year's results, as well as a balance sheet, income statement and cash flow statement information. Securities and Exchange Commission rules require that it be distributed to all shareholders. A more detailed version is called a 10-K and is filed with the SEC.

Asset

Any possession that has value in an exchange.

Asset Turnover

The ratio of a company's net sales to its total assets.

Auction Market

Market in which the prevailing price of a security is determined through the free interaction of prospective buyers and sellers, as on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The Nasdaq market, by contrast, is a dealer market, meaning that intermediaries, called market makers, act on behalf of investors, executing their trades and often increasing investors' costs of trading.

Average

An arithmetic mean return of selected stocks intended to represent the behavior of the market or some component of it. One example is the widely quoted Dow Jones industrial average (DJIA), which adds the current prices of the 30 DJIA stocks and divides the results by a predetermined number, the divisor.